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While I’m doing Glulxe testing, I thought I’d take one more screen shot of the game, this one all text. This is right after the game intro screen comes up, and the player presses the space bar to get into the game proper.

You’ll notice the first command issued by the player is followed by more descriptive text. “More” is a custom command I’ve added to the system that displays more detailed information about the location surroundings. Ultimately, it’s all to help the player make sense of the game.

The Interactive Fiction I grew up on (starting with the Scott Adams text adventures that I got in cassette form for my TI 99/4A computer) was all text based. No graphics at all; just two-word phrases that eventually turned into more sophisticated Infocom game sentences, but still words only. In fact, one of my favorite computer game ads was the Infocom print ad that said something to the effect of “We stick our graphics where the sun don’t shine,” and then there was a picture of the human brain. Pretty clever, and you can see it here.

One of the characteristics that makes Inform 7 so appealing as an IF development environment is that it allows a person to rapidly put together an IF game in the form of those old Infocom games: a pretty robost parser that allowed for sentence input. However, Inform 7 has made a number of improvements to the output it produces, compared to the earlier Infocom games. One of those improvements is the ability to integrate graphic images into the Inform code for display when someone plays the game.

I’ve decided to take advantage of this feature during development of the Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative. I’ll be using the photographs I have taken of Williamsburg, and I’ll have the photographs changed into a more comic-like illustration. Below is a sample of the Capitol Building already having gone through the image processing.

As you can see, the photograph has been altered to appear as more of an illustration. I’ll do this for all of the photographs to be used in the game. Please share your thoughts: do you like this approach to Interactive Fiction? Or does IF need to be more “old school”?

Attention educators and gamers! I’m currently working on my dissertation, and my research involves examining student and instructor experiences in using Interactive Fiction games in either secondary or post-secondary education environments. Specifically, I’m looking for instructors that use or may be interested in using Interactive Fiction to support assignments in history or literature courses. Additionally, I’m looking for available IF games that may be suitable for use in this way. If you or someone you know might be interested in participating in a study or be able to list some text-only Interactive Fiction games for education, please let me know.

Although the Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative is not yet completed, eventually I hope to have it used as a piece of historical Interactive Fiction that can be used in the teaching and learning environment.

Since 2002, the NMC (New Media Corporation) has been publishing a series of Horizon Reports meant to provide insight into the up-and-coming technologies that would have impact in education. In the Horizon Report > 2013 for Higher Education, one of the impact categories identified is “Games and Gamification.” The Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative project was cited as an example in the report.

As game play continues to be a major focal point of discussions among educators, some believe that gamified learning is merely a trend, and carries the danger of immediately disenchanting students if executed poorly. To negate this challenge, more universities are partnering with organizations and companies skilled in game design to develop and integrate games that are relevant to the curriculum and to students’ lives. Games and gamification in education include a broad set of approaches to teaching and learning, and when implemented effectively, can help with new skill acquisition while boosting motivation to learn.

There is much conversation around the use of computer games in education, but the development of custom game content is often trivial “drill and practice” applications, or the implementation of off-the-shelf games don’t align well–if at all–with curriculum learning objectives. Interactive Fiction (the genre of the Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative) may be ideal for the teaching and learning environment. This article in the Learning Through Play & Technology blog addresses the potential of using custom-developed IF as a purposeful component of curriculum.

While the colonial Williamsburg environment will be accurately portrayed, some locations will get a more thorough treatment than others. As construction of the game environment moves forward, these are the historic sites that will receive focused attention:

The Governor’s Palace

The Randolph House

The Wythe House and Gardens

The Courthouse

The Magazine and Guardhouse

The Capitol

King’s Tavern

Additionally, there will be game activity on the Duke of Gloucester Street, and one other (very large) location that, for now, will remain unnamed–and quite essential to the core storyline.